Maintaining Your WordPress Website
Has it been 6 months or more since your website launched? Is your site showing signs of age such as broken links, map not working, social media not showing or worse – a white screen of death?
Twice annual content review
If it has been more than 6 months, right now is time for a website review and maintenance. As your pricing, teams, addresses and strategies change, we recommend that you also undertake a review of your website content to make sure it is still up to date.
WordPress updates are necessary
Don’t forget to regularly update your website software. Take a backup first so if anything goes wrong, you can get back to where you started, quickly. Update WordPress and all Plug-ins then test your website to make sure it is working and displaying exactly as it should. You may also want to update your Theme and check the PHP version on your hosting and your SSL certificate too.
How often should I update WordPress
We recommend monthly updates to WordPress and plugins, and that is what we do for our care plan customers. If you are not on a care plan, you need to schedule in maintenance as often as you can – if not monthly, then at least every six months. You can do this yourself or we can do this for you.
Don’t put it off – left too long, software updates become harder, more costly and leave your site vulnerable to compromises. Compromises (a.k.a hacks) happen to all size businesses. Hackers often attack neglected sites that have security flaws. Often there is no “reason” – it is just because they can.
Even if your site doesn’t get hacked (and we sincerely hope it won’t), small items on your site might break – this could mean a broken map, a social media feed like Instagram disappearing, text overlapping, a white screen with an error message, a red screen in Chrome with a security warning, a back end (WordPress dashboard) that can’t be accessed etc. If this is the case, you may encounter higher costs to fix than if you had simply updated your site along the way.
…But I don’t want to do my own website updates
We hear you. As a busy business owner, the last thing you need is keeping up with the techy stuff. It feels risky and the learning curve is great. So we have you covered…
We can undertake a one off update for you, or pop you onto one of our easy Care Plans (maintenance and hosting packages) for complete peace of mind. Our Care Plan maintenance packages make website ownership easy as we do all the work for you and they include free hosting (for most sites). Best of all you have VIP access to our support system with faster turnarounds for all of our Care Plan customers.
For more information, contact us today.